Belfast & Queen's University (Nicholas)

Today, we headed up to Belfast in Northern Ireland to learn about the 2 sides of the political conflict, and to explore one of the most famous colleges on the island. Queen's university sort of felt like a little safe space in the middle of an area of ongoing conflict. The city was full of strong history, but it also seemed a little gloomy, and honestly in a way it felt like something was a little off, which I guess is accurate. The campus was beautiful and there were lots of flowers and open spaces filled with greenery and walkways. It kind of reminded me of colleges in the United States, but it also had a slightly different feel. The student union was crazy nice, it looked brand new and had a whole little store inside it. There were tons of people there and it just seemed like a really cool place to be able to go. Afterwards, we walked back to the sports facilities and headed upstairs to try some Gaelic sports. At first, we tried Gaelic football and it was honestly really hard. You had to kick it up with your foot and pass it to your teammate in a strange way. So, we practiced in lines for a bit then had some free time to try out the moves around the gym and try to see if we could kick it into the basketball hoops or not. It was really strange trying to do it because I had honestly never seen this sport before. After a bit of that they let us play basketball, so we went down to the main basketball gym and played some mini games which was fun. They also brought us pizza which was pretty good, and then we got a cool t-shirt from the university to take home which was nice. The bus ride back was super long, mostly because of those farmer protests. I would say we passed 10 or 15 tractors on the highway on the way home which was crazy to see. We got back around 6:45, and then headed home from there after a long day.


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